Windows and Apples
by TenyumeKasumi
Summary: Legion interprets windows as a structural weakness and observes that the SR-2 seems to have an excess of this. So begins his quest to rectify that. Unfortunately, some people just can't be swayed. So resumes the war between the windows and the apples.


It was supposed to just another day in the life of Joker 'Jeff' Moreau. Except for the one teeny, tiny problem that the whole galaxy seemed to hate him and happened to decide that his day today would need just that little extra spice. He later kicked himself for not seeing it coming – only figuratively, of course. His femur bone would probably have snapped from the force. Not a nice thought.

Either way, it all started when EDI addressed him out of the blue during his recreation time. "Jeff, there appears to be a problem."

"Er, can you take care of it yourself, EDI? Kind of busy here."

"Jeff, I would think that the continuing operation of my main systems are more critical to the mission than the viewing of your illegal and overly explicit pornograp- "

"Shhh!" hissed the pilot, finally turning his seat around to face the ever-present, ever-nagging glowing blue orb by his side. Eyes flicking shiftily to the bridge to check if anyone was listening, he snarled at the AI, "Do you want the whole crew to know about my stash? No, wait. Don't answer. You probably do. You just love to screw me up like that, don't you? So I would appreciate it if you just- EDI?"

The blue orb flickered, disappearing for a moment before reappearing again. "It would seem as if someone is tampering with the core files of my operating system."

Joker was serious now, dropping the sarcastic tone and gripping the armrests of his pilot seat tightly. "What? Your operating system? How? _Who?_"

"I am unable t-t-to determine that," the cool, sultry voice was stuttering now and he could hear static. It was like a signal interference on an unstable radio channel. The blue orb began flickering more erratically. "I-i-it appears to be origin-gi-ginating from– "

And then, without warning, the voice cut off and the orb vanished. Gone. Before Joker could have enough time to process what had just happened and only just begin to feel the horror of the implications, the entire ship was plunged into darkness.

The panic was instantaneous – crewmembers screamed in alarm, someone was shouting elcor curses, Hawthorned bellowed about a stubbed toe, someone else fell off their chair, Joker could hear Kelly's voice over the din trying to get everyone to calm down and _stay where they were_ and he swore he could hear someone crying and whimpering for Mr. Teddy. It was a cacophony of unintelligible chaos.

But of major concern right now was that the entire deck was bathed in the inky darkness of space – no ambient orange glow anywhere, which meant that not even the terminals were working. That included his. Which meant the Normandy's engines were currently offline, and he could feel the truth of it in the way the ship was losing power as the faint tremors of the drive core he was so used to feeling under his feet died. This also meant that the stealth systems were offline and they were wide open for detection and attack.

"SHIT!" swore Joker, slapping his hands on the dark, unlit pilot's terminal as the Normandy began to steadily slow to a stop. "EDI, what the hell just happened?! Come on! You can't just go off on me like that! You have a job to do! Come _on_! ANSWER ME, GOD DAMN- "

And just as suddenly as they had gone off, the lights came back on; the terminals lit up once more, the numbers reporting that the stealth systems had been reactivated. Joker felt the steady thrum of life as the engines and drive core came back online. The Normandy was picking up lost speed, they were moving again.

Joker collapsed back into his seat, heaving a sigh of relief as the sounds of confusion among the Cerberus crew reached his ears. Craning his neck to check on the now-returned glowing orb, he snapped, "That wasn't funny, EDI! I mean, if you're trying to pull a joke on us- " He stopped himself short mid-sentence. Stared at the orb. Blinked twice. Stared at it again. No, he definitely wasn't seeing things.

EDI's orb was there, but with one teeny, tiny difference – it was glowing a silvery white, not the bright blue he was accustomed to seeing.

"EDI?"

"Hello, Mr. Moreau. What can I help you with?"

The voice was definitely EDI's, but something about the tone and manner of speech was off. Joker narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the orb. "Wait a minute… You're not EDI, are you?"

The response he got made his blood run cold and his eyes bug out of their sockets in horrific realistion.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean by, 'You're not Eevee are you'. How about a web search for it?"

* * *

"Shepard! Great timing!" Tali exclaimed anxiously as the commander stormed out from the elevator on the Crew's Quarters deck, having been stuck inside for a few seconds while the power had mysteriously failed. "There was something strange about the power cut earlier – it ran through the entire ship and even disabled our drive core. For something as powerful as that to get past our firewalls, the AI must have been affected. I tried talking to EDI, but she's not responding to me. Whatever it was, it was something big. I thought I should go check it out– "

"Right." Shepard nodded in approval, turning and heading to the AI Core. But before they could move more than two paces, Tali felt a tap on her shoulder and turned quizzically.

The hooded figure of Kasumi Goto waved cheerily back at them, if a bit nervously. "Erm, hey Shep! Hi Tali. I don't mean to interrupt your exhilarating excursion, but I think you might want to see this."

Without another word, the thief turned her back and walked back to her quarters in the Port Observation room, trusting them to follow. Exchanging furtive glances – or what they could through Tali's reflective faceplate – human and quarian darted after Kasumi.

When she reached the door, she stepped into the room then to the side to allow Shepard and Tali access. "So, um, yeah. I can't get him to stop and he's not listening to anything I say…"

There was a stunned moment of silence. For a good ten seconds, nobody said a thing and the only sound in the room was mechanical stirs and high-pitched twittering. And then Tali broke the silence, "Legion… what in the name of the ancestors are you doing?"

Pausing its actions, the geth crouched on the ground before the large window twitched its flashlight in her direction. It turned around best it could while on the ground, facing the three figures before it.

"Greetings, Creator Tali'Zorah, Shepard-Commander, Goto-Thief," it said, faceplates raising slightly.

"How come I get greeted last?" Kasumi grumbled under her breath behind Shepard, who wasn't listening. The Commander of the Normandy had gone very still, standing rooted to the spot at the sight before them.

"Legion." Tali and Kasumi collectively shrank back by reflex at the use of the Commander-Voice, though it appeared to have no effect at all on the indifferent geth. "Answer the question. What the hell are you doing to my ship?"

Legion tilted its lamp-like head to the side, faceplates flaring curiously as if it was wondering why everyone seemed so shocked or disgusted or angry. "… Windows are a structural weakness. Geth do not use them."

"Yeah, I get that," responded Shepard, tone biting. "What I don't get is why you've broken the glass and stuffed the space with apples."

Slowly, Legion lowered its head to stare at the bright, shiny red apple in its three fingered hand, then behind it – where the window had once been was now a wall of tightly packed, brilliant red apples stuffed so closely to one another that they served as a barrier between the vacuum outside and the inside of the ship.

"… You are displeased in the change in hardware of the Normandy, Shepard-Commander?"

"'Displeased'? _Displeased?! _Hasn't it occurred to you that _others_ beside yourself might need windows?"

"It has occurred to our consensus, yes," replied Legion, as it turned back to the window and wedged the apple in between two others, adding to the ones already there. Tali could have sworn she heard a vein pop in Shepard's head and shivered. She'd read somewhere on the extranet that it was usually a dangerous sign in human behaviour.

"Then why in God's green Earth– "

Before Shepard could finish, the Port Observation door opened again and Garrus stepped in, blue armour clanking loudly against the bare floor. "Shepard, I thought you might want to know– " The turian froze, staring up from the datapad he was analysing to the wall of apples now replacing the once transparent, reinforced glass window. His mandibles went slack as he gazed, open-mouthed, while Legion continued to line the space with more apples. The bandage at the side of his head held the injured mandible tight against his face, giving him a comically lopsided expression.

"You were saying, Vakarian?"

The clipped, impatient tone of the Commander snapped him back to attention and he buried himself in the datapad again. "Erm, well, I ran a diagnostics on the weird power outage just now and it got traced back to the a place in the ship itself – the AI Core in particular. I got there and when I tried opening the terminal – well… There was this weird symbol in the middle of the screen that looked like that odd human fruit over… er, over there…" Garrus muttered, gesturing half-heartedly at Legion's handiwork while the geth ploughed on with its project, oblivious to the growing murderous intent in the room.

When Garrus refused to elaborate further, Legion added, "Perhaps this is an opportune time to inform you that we have also installed upgrades to the operating system of the Normandy."

The vein throbbed again. Shepard was outright glaring at the geth's back now. The human's eyes were like daggers and tone akin to ice. "What kind of upgrades are we talking about?"

Just then, EDI's glowing orb winked into existence – with the teeny, tiny difference that it was glowing silver instead of blue.

"Mr. Joker 'Jeff' Moreau has the following message for Commander Shepard. Playing back recording now: "-t the fuck! What the hell just happened?! Get my baby fixed, damn it! And EDI's acting all weird and– " end of recording. Would you like me to compose a reply? Yes, or no?"

There was another stretch of silence before Garrus rumbled an astounded "What?"

A beep from the orb, then, "I'm sorry, I do not understand 'What'. Would you like me to compose a reply to Mr. Joker 'Jeff' Moreau? Yes, or no?"

"Legion…" Shepard began, voice dangerously low. As one, Garrus, Tali and Kasumi began to slowly back out of the room and retreat to Life Support and seek Thane's protection from impending doom. "Did you say that you changed the Normandy's operating system?"

"… As we have said, Windows are a structural weakness. On the other hand, Apple provides more– "

There was a second power outage that day as an explosion of sorts took place in Port Observation. There was much more cursing from Joker and much more wailing from someone who wanted Mr. Teddy with them _right now_ because the dark was scary. Thane was saddled with three traumatised teammates and tasked with trying to coax them out of the air ventilation shaft they had taken refuge in. Kasumi's quarters looked much the worse for wear and her leather couch had to be replaced – courtesy of The Illusive Man, though _he_ didn't need to know that. Legion suffered extensive damage to its outer hardware due to repeated blunt force trauma from what appeared to be a table leg, requiring Kenneth and Gabby – and later Tali, when Thane had finally convinced her that it was safe to come out – to repair it over the span of two weeks.

On the bright side, the ship's operating systems and EDI were restored back to normal within a day. But the battle between panes of glass and round Earth fruits continues still.

* * *

**A/N:** Ah, feels good to get something out even though it's none of the things I should have been working on... :P

I'd wanted to submit something for April Fool's, but since I already have an April Fool's fic coming that is no where near completion I thought an unintentionally trolling Legion would do the job fine. And kudos to you if you spot that other game reference. Shame to you if you don't get the entire debacle about windows and apples.

The writing was slightly weird to me since I decided to try and make Shepard's gender ambiguous -which is why there are next to no details about the Commander's physical appearance. Yay or nay?

- Kasumi

P.S.: Those who own an iPhone 4S or newer or those who are at least familiar with Siri should recognise some of Silver-EDI's lines.


End file.
